It's been well addressed that there's the usage of it, where people would actually use the provision, and then the ability to negotiate better. In our case, we have specific cases where traffic has moved. We would ship a lot of product in the U.S. What we've found is that CN and CP don't necessarily want to move our traffic to the U.S. because they'll often lose those cars for 30 days potentially. Generally, they price very high for those moves to discourage shippers from being able to access those markets. They have to structure their network however they think, and optimize and utilize their assets the way they feel.
What extended interswitching did was it to actually allow those shippers to access BNSF, which wants to move that traffic. When we really look at this and think about the whole network, having that competition is actually helping the entire network. Those who want to use those assets for another move or to go to the west coast or to Thunder Bay won't necessarily feel the pressure from the shippers who are complaining about a lack of service and the lack of adherence to common carrier obligations because another railway can pick it up. In fact, we're optimizing, in general, that provision. It optimizes the entire network, and it optimizes things as far as making economic decisions is concerned, both for the railways and shippers.
That's what competition does, and that's what we saw. When it was used, it had a huge impact. We have a small shipper, and it's able to save $1,500 per car. It's only moving 15 cars, and it has maybe five employees, so that has a huge impact for that shipper. It can invest that money in its business, and it can invest in the economy and grow its business.
As much as it may seem like small numbers for small or medium shippers, it has a huge impact.